


The Dawning of the Day

by paperiuni



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Breakfast, Fluff, M/M, Post-Game, Vignette
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 20:34:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4493799
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/paperiuni/pseuds/paperiuni
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The world is old, the day is new, and the war is over. Dorian and Bull settle into it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Dawning of the Day

**Author's Note:**

  * For [radiophile](https://archiveofourown.org/users/radiophile/gifts).



> To my darling Adri on her birthday. ♥

Bull stirs when Dorian levers himself off his shoulder with a dry-throated groan. His feet thump to the floor and rustle off across the straw covering the tavern floor. There's timber at Bull's back and a wide bench under him, empty now where Dorian left his spot. Someone's legs are thrown across his lap. He cracks his eye open: Dalish, snuffling away half atop Skinner, who's propped up by a snoring Rocky on her other side.

The door sounds, Dorian going, Maud entering. She's got an apron tied on over her best dress, and her fingers work her mussed auburn hair into a braid while she surveys the damage from last night's triumphal drinking. Coming from a bed not her own, Bull muses, and adds the conspicuous absence of his steadfast lieutenant to the equation.

Only took one decisive battle against an power-crazy darkspawn magister to make Krem gather his courage. Bull makes a note to give him grief later. She'd been returning his wistful glances for the last three months.

On the other hand: some of them saved the world yesterday, and others still have to sweep away the beer-soppy straw the next morning. The water pump cranks to ancient, copper-jointed life in the kitchen.

Bull folds Dalish's bare feet gently from his leg. She mumbles and curls up onto her side. He trails Maud into the kitchen to exchange good mornings and borrow a bucket to upend over himself. She shoves him out the door to finish his ablutions, smiling all the while.

A good portion of Skyhold likely starts the day outside their usual cots. A few sleepless soldiers lean against the curtain wall, passing a leather flask between them. The sweet warm smell of baking bread wafts from the propped-open doors of the kitchens.

You could say the celebration began in the main keep hall, but it spilled across all of Skyhold soon enough. Bull can't remember where he left half his company on the winding way down to the Herald's Rest. Good places, he hopes. Safe places, all the same. Not a bad thought to wake up on.

Frances is at her table in the kitchen, cracking eggs into a bowl, dashed with flour from kerchief to knee. In a show of magnanimity sure never to be repeated, she tells him to help himself to her shelves. "Oh, go on. It can't be worse than four of my bakers not showing for work."

Breakfast will be a late and piecemeal affair today, with the better part of the castle folk strayed from their rhythms by the festivities.

One end of the world averted. For that, the cooks may even forgive them for the ensuing mess.

Bull ties his loot into a brown linen towel with sincere promises to return it, snags two mugs and one of the cast-iron teapots on their way up to the keep for more distinguished breakfasts, and gets himself out of Frances's kerchief before her leniency runs out.

On top of the southernmost tower there's an old table and a couple of weatherbeaten chairs. Bull has no idea who dragged them up the tumbledown stairs--some industrious guards, or else someone looking for a spot of hermitry in the crowded castle. The wind drags lazily on the banners, too early to disperse the damp dawn chill.

Morning creeps in over the horizon like a merry pirate with her booty of gold: the sun rises huge and tawny, girded with long coils of clouds.

"There's a pretty sight," Bull remarks.

Dorian, leaned in a corner of the towertop, gives him a bemused laugh. "Which one do you mean?"

He's in the same clothes as the night before, wearing one of Sera's thick ram's wool quilts like a cloak. A ragged embroidery of red poppies runs along the hem. Bull recalls half waking when Dorian settled on his free side in the night, but the ale and the exhaustion drew him back under quick enough.

"Both," Bull offers. Dorian looks drowsy, his eyes dark with too little sleep. At ease, though, even at this cold height.

That tired gaze lights up as Dorian turns to see what Bull is holding. "I will not dare hope that's not birch leaves in the pot."

"Have a little faith," Bull mutters in the same tones of fond mockery. "Smelled like mint. Maybe raspberry."

"Marginally better." Dorian exhales against his curled hands, and the air wavers gently with enchanted heat. "So, our first sober act as men at liberty will be a morning meal on top of the wall."

"I climbed six sets of creaky stairs and didn't spill a drop of that tea. Sit your ass down."

"Oh, I've made a poor show of my gratitude, haven't I?" Dorian bends his head, his hair curling wild at the ends. "I do appreciate it. Especially the tea."

"Thought you got stuck in the keep last night." Bull had caved to Sera's demands of a more free-wheeling party while Dorian had remained immersed in conversation with Cullen and Lavellan.

" _You_ were snoring in the common room by the time I came down." Dorian draws his belt knife to cut the flat rye bread, still steaming and springy after the oven. Bull tears his own in half with his fingers. Hard cheese, smoked ham, and a pilfered handful of candied dates--Frances told him to make free, so he did. There are even pears, round and amber in their ripeness.

"So you borrowed a blanket from Sera and slept on a bench? That's almost sweet."

Dorian likes the illusion that he can only get a good night's rest on goosedown pillows and a mattress of the same. He especially likes to keep up that fiction. The ugly truth is that Bull's seen him collapse on a hard bedroll and catnap sitting up too many times to count. The last two years have made them all into fighters.

Bull feels a small glow whenever Sera faces a demon head on, aim sure, arrows away, or whenever Cassandra halts and takes an extra blink to gauge her target. The same way he's warm with pride now, looking at Dorian tipping tea into their mugs, draped in Sera's quilt. Pride for his choices, his unstinting effort. Poured together with that of them all, it bought them victory.

The world hasn't been fixed overnight. The task did just get quite a bit easier. He'll need to talk to Cullen about the Chargers' contract. Cassandra and Leliana can no longer fend off Mother Giselle and the question of the Divine's empty seat. Southern politics. He won't escape them if he means to stay.

"I did." Dorian clears his throat, bringing Bull back from his thoughts. "Waking you would have woken up the whole troupe of them, you understand."

"I never lock my door. You know that."

Dorian blinks owlishly before the implication hits home. "Ah. Well. Sleeping in your bed without you in it has a peculiar ring to it."

"Nothing like compliments to start the day," Bull says, blowing on his tea with somewhat unwarranted industry. Damn stuff will cool on its own. There's a curl of warmth up his throat that has nothing to do with the tea.

"Keep wishing, you great lout," Dorian mutters, so softly it's practically an endearment.

They sit and chew the bread, sip the tea, kept hot by the iron pot. Dorian taps his boot heel on a leg of his chair, becomes aware of the noise, and stops. Bull divides the pears with Dorian's knife and they share them equally. Dorian eats a few more of the candied dates. Bull lets it slide.

The sun rises higher, glazing the snow-peaked mountains with pale light. The first morning after the war, Bull finds himself thinking. What's an old warrior to do with himself?

Then Dorian says, without preamble, "She asked if I meant to stay." He's turned halfway away from Bull. The sun draws a soft line of light and shadow along his silhouette.

"The boss?" Only safe thing to ask.

"Who else?" Dorian huffs. He drops a pear core onto the table from his fingers.

"We patched up the sky. Wiped the floor with the only asshole who could rip it up again." Bull tries to flex his neck, loosen the twinge of a stubborn knot at his nape. "That might open up some new roads."

"Oh, certainly." The worst thing is that Bull can hear the smile spilling into Dorian's voice. "Such as the one Cullen sincerely hopes will be finished before the snows. It'd end right about there." He gestures westward, where the bridge sits a hundred feet below them.

Bull looks out, following Dorian's pointing finger. "What'd you tell her?" 

"That I'd sleep on it. Which I have done for perhaps a single watch."

"Hah. I should be sorry, hm?"

"Indeed," Dorian says. His hand lands on the table, palm up, fingers spread. There's a cut across his palm: a shattered lyrium vial in mid-fight; the dim red scars of a fire spell he held in his fingertips a fraction too long.

Bull lets himself still, and puts away the thoughts that range beyond the morning.

"Gonna be a pretty slow day," he says, and sets his hand on top of Dorian's. "I could still make it up to you."

Dorian's fingers slot through his, sticky with fruit pulp, sure, and warm. "We could discuss that."


End file.
